


Seeing the Dawn

by WoD89 (webofdreams89)



Category: DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Making Up, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23516998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webofdreams89/pseuds/WoD89
Summary: “Things haven’t been right between us for a while now,” Dick said eventually.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Dick Grayson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 101





	Seeing the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This story was previously published under my main account. Under a fit of mania (thanks bipolar!), I deleted a bunch of my stories some time ago. I wanted to put it back up and, since I primarily write F/F now, I decided to make a pseud. I'm pretty sure I wrote this for a fic exchange but can't remember which one or who it was for. If that's the case, I'm really sorry if this was your gift!
> 
> Anyway, the story is set pre-New 52 a few years after Bruce returns as Batman and Dick goes back to being Nightwing.

Tim perched high above the city, a dark silhouette against the deep navy of the sky. He was waiting, tensed and ready for the comm to go off in his ear, but so far it had been quiet. Gotham was never this quiet.

He heard Nightwing long before he saw him. Dick was practically soundless, quieter than any of Gotham’s cadre of vigilantes thanks to his acrobatic background. But Tim was highly trained to know when he wasn’t alone. Besides, he was intimately familiar with the near-silent intake of breath Dick took before he leapt. Tim would know it anywhere.

Dick landed next to him and waited. Dick wasn’t any good at waiting and eventually stood from his crouch and shifted his feet. Tim pointedly ignored him and continued to scan the city in silence.

Just when Tim was sure Dick was going to give up and move on to patrol elsewhere, he let out a long breath and said, “This high up, above all the lights of Gotham, you can almost see the stars if you look hard enough.”

Tim snorted and slipped his binoculars back into his utility belt. “That’s a poetic observation,” he said, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

Dick’s body tensed with such subtlety that Tim wasn’t sure if anyone else would even be able to pick up on it. But then no one had spent as much time watching Dick’s body, learning all of his ticks, as Tim had.

Tense or not, Dick kept his head thrown back, looking heavenward.

Racking his eyes down the long line of Dick’s body, Tim felt something inside him stir that he’d refused to think on for a while now. He whipped his head away, biting his lip so he wouldn’t swear aloud.

He felt light-headed, almost stupid-giddy. It was like he was sixteen again, like he’d almost just lost it all and then had the one thing left that meant anything snatched away too by the person he’d put all his faith in.

It put Tim off his game, and he stumbled. It was enough to jar Dick from his faraway thoughts, his arm shooting out to steady Tim’s body from the edge. He used the momentum to bring them both down to a sitting position.

“Thanks,” Tim said faintly. He couldn’t believe what had just nearly happened. How rookie it was.

“Of course, Timmy,” Dick said, smiling over at him. From the corner of his eye, Tim watched Dick’s body unfold, his legs swinging over the edge of the building and kicking up like a child’s. Barbara was right when she said Dick’s instincts would sooner lead him into gunfire than immobility.

Feeling the air expel from his lungs as he tried to steady himself, Tim chastised, “No names, Nightwing. You know better.”

Finally, Dick wavered, his smile dimming. Tim loathed how much that still affected him. He wasn’t a kid anymore.

Once upon a time, Dick was the thing Tim measured himself by, but now he was older. He knew that Dick was just as human, just as fallible as the rest of them.

So much had changed between them since then, and it was more and more apparent every time Tim found himself alone with Dick.

“Things haven’t been right between us for a while now,” Dick said eventually, practically voicing Tim’s thoughts aloud. His tone wasn’t that teasing, jovial voice he used as he flitted in and out of gunfire and snuck up behind criminals and it certainly wasn’t Dick’s normal voice, the one in which he forgot to mask the hint of an accent that let people know he may not have spent the first years of his life speaking a language other than English.

It was closer to the voice he’d used that night, when he informed Tim that he hadn’t been chosen to be Dick’s Robin. That he was handing the mantle over to a smug ten year old weighed down by arrogance and authority issues and blood.

“Nightwing,” Tim said, hoping Dick could pick up his exasperation.

It wasn’t a conversation Tim wanted to have on a rare tranquil night in Gotham. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have at all, not when he didn’t feel ready to let go of the rawness of it all.

Dick ignored Tim’s warning and said, “I already cleared it with Oracle and we won’t be called unless we’re absolutely needed. Besides, it won’t be much longer until dawn.”

“So that’s why the radio silence,” Tim said, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, to lash out like something inside him wanted to. Of course Dick would do that just so he and his little Timmy could have a heart-to-heart and talk about their feelings.

For a brief moment, Tim understood why Jason, and not to mention Damian and Bruce too, hated it so much when Dick got like this.

This was so not what he’d expected when he suited up earlier that evening. He was perfectly fine continuing to sweep things under the rug and pretend that nothing was wrong with them, and with him.

“Yep,” Dick said, still staring up at the stars. He leaned back on his hands before he looked over at Tim. He waited for Tim to speak, but when he didn’t, Dick sighed and said, “You’ve never really forgiven me. Sometimes you act like you have, but it’s always there whenever we’re in the same room together. This is a conversation we need to have if anything is ever going to change.”

“Why?” Tim asked, his voice sharp as a blade. He wanted to ignore the truth to Dick’s statement even as he desperately wished things between them were some semblance of normal. “Why is this something we need to talk about all of a sudden? It’s been more than two years since you fired me. Batman is back, you’re Nightwing again, and I became Red Robin. We’ve all moved on.”

“And things have only been getting worse between us.” Dick sighed, and stood.

“Fine, okay, not now. But please, soon. Promise me.” Tim heard Dick’s voice slip again, hinting at that otherness found far beyond the gates of Gotham. He remembered hearing the thickness of it that first time when he was young when Dick had picked him up for a photo, murmuring into Tim’s ear that tonight’s performance would be dedicated to him.

Tim’s gloves crackled as he clenched his hands into tight fists. Dick wanted this conversation, so who was Tim to deny him when there was so much he wanted to say. “Something inside me keeps me from forgiving you. Congratulations, you’re right that I’m still not okay.”

He stole a glance at Dick, finding a blank slate. He hated that. He wanted Dick, who usually showed his hand freely with his nearest and dearest, to look as emotional as Tim felt. He knew why Dick kept his face passive. It has always been easier for Tim to have a hard conversation when he wasn’t faced with extreme emotions, his own or otherwise.

Somehow, knowing that Dick wanted to make things easier for him softened Tim.  
“It still hurts, Dick.”

Tim’s voice was so quiet Dick had to lean in to hear him. “It’s old and dulled, but I can still feel it every time I move. I needed you. Things…things were so awful for me and I needed you and you let me down.”

“I know I did,” Dick said, voice so hoarse that it made Tim look back up at him. Just like that, the wall over his emotions collapsed, enabling Tim to see each of them flit beauteously across Dick’s face one after another. This Tim had missed.

“Things didn’t exactly go like I’d planned them to. You didn’t react the way I thought you would. I miscalculated when I thought giving you a push, officially making you my equal, was in your best interest because it had worked for me. Instead, it messed everything up,” Dick explained, running his hand through his hair. “But I’m constantly amazed by everything you’ve done the last few years, all the good you’ve done, all the people you saved.

“I know you needed me, but Damian did too, and I don’t regret all the progress I made with him. I can’t, not after witnessing the person he’s becoming. I never meant to make it seem like I was choosing between you, even though that’s basically what it came down too.

“I just miss you, T. I know we’ll probably never exactly have the relationship between us that we had before, but I do want us to have a relationship, and a good one. I want to be friends again, brothers, lo-” Dick said before cutting himself off. Surprisingly, Tim saw Dick’s cheeks flush.

Damn if Tim didn’t want that too, and damn if he didn’t linger on the word Dick prevented himself from saying aloud, that word they’d been dancing around for a long time.  
“I just want us to be close again. I want us to spend time together outside of patrol and missions.”

It wasn’t the voice of playboy-in-training Richard Grayson or Nightwing or the showboat voice of the last Flying Grayson, but of honest to goodness, heart-on-his-sleeve Dick Grayson, and hearing it made something inside Tim crack open.

“Now,” he said. “Now is fine.”

“What?” Dick asked, crossing his arms over the blue V of his uniform.

“Let’s spend time together then,” Tim said.

Though he didn’t open his eyes, Tim felt Dick’s eyes on him for a long moment before he heard Dick sit back down next to him. “You sure?” Dick asked, and Tim did open his eyes.

Tim couldn’t help but feel bad about the uncertainty in Dick voice. He thought about all the times he’d blown Dick off in the last two years, the times he’d refused his calls and ignored the pounding on his apartment door. Dick made mistakes but he wasn’t alone in the rift that’d opened between them.

Tim stood too. “Yes. I’ll meet you at your apartment in an hour,” he said. “I want breakfast. And not that ridiculous cereal you’re always eating either. I want something substantial.”

“You got it,” Dick said, a wide smile spreading across his face that Tim could feel all the way down to his toes. “How about pancakes?”

Tim nodded, shot his zipline, and leapt.

***

As Tim stood outside Dick’s door in his casual clothes, he still felt uncertain about where they stood. He didn’t have a clue what he would say to Dick. Thankfully, Dick had always been good at filling the silences. Maybe Tim could trust him to take care of that. Maybe he could trust Dick to take care of a little more than that too.

He hoped so.

It was possible Dick would let him down again, but there was only one way to find out.

Tim knocked. On the other side of the door, he heard the clang of a pan, a curse as something fell to the ground, and then footsteps. The doorknob turned, and Dick appeared a moment later.

“Hey, Timmy. I’m glad you came,” Dick said. He had a smudge of pancake mix on his forehead, the powder graying his eyebrows. He smiled, moving aside to let Tim through.

“I am too,” Tim said, and he stepped inside.


End file.
